A lot has happened in a very short amount of time, I’ve been a busy guy! A few days after winning the Scholarship eadams contacted me about participating in a little distance based learning experiment he whipped up involving the Cisco Network Academy. Without getting into all the details Aubrey opened up an enrollment slot in his CCNA Exploration program to assist in my studies. In return he asked me to blog about my experiences with the program from a distance based learning perspective and post a link from my blogs here onto the Cisco NetAcad’s Facebook page. Hopefully that will drive up some unique IP’s

I’ve been watching the CBTNugget and Train-Signal CCNA Training video’s in addition to the Cisco Network Academy courses. They really offer fun alternative to the sturdy workload of the NetAcad. I’ve finished both the CBTnuggets and Train-Signal ICND1 DVD’s and feel pretty good about what’s covered in the CCENT. I’m really impressed with Jeremy Clorara’s teaching style, he’s not much about whiteboards or lecture based teacher like Chris, he’s just hands on multitasking with lots of little stories and metaphors that keep you entertained and engaged. Chris is great too, but between the two I favor Jeremy. Chris has a really nice set of 3 x 100 question practice test on his DVD. Quiz 1 has a lot of great story based subnetting questions that are pretty challenging and make you stop and do the work!

I’ve also finished the first Network Academy Course called Network Fundamentals. It’s an 11 chapter, 18-22 week instructor lead semester structure as a crash course in the OSI & TCP communications. That’s a bit of an understatement, but I can tell you It was tough. it’s really designed to make you slow down, do the labs and Packet Tracer examples and embed the concepts. I wasted the better portion of a day taking the first 5 tests without studying the chapters just to figure out that there was no way I was going to pass the exam unless I went back and did the work! Cisco Network Academy is no joke.

I've read upto Chapter 5 in the CiscoPress ICND1, I put it on the back burner until finishing the DVD's. I wanted a general scope of the CCENT and it's content before reading the book so I could focus on key principals I know I need to work with. It's a good book, I'm looking forward to slowing things down a LOT next week and putting the book to good use!

In my spare time between studying, I’ve managed to set up my Rack for future ICND2 labs. It may seem funny, but I was taken back on just how different real hardware is to work with then GNS3. Everything takes about 3 times as long and when something does go unexpectedly wrong you take it a lot more serious. So far on the rack I’ve successfully setup a working topology, tftp server, updated the IOS’s, added some new physical memory, couple new NM-cards, and even had time last night to configure DHCP and NAT thought the SDM. No thanks to the newer Java version. I was pulling my hair out trying to get SDM to load on my PC before looking online and noticing only the older java versions work with SDM, what’s up with that!

Last edited by scottsee on Mon Nov 08, 2010 11:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Yeah, I wanted to make sure I knew how to navigate though the GUI. I'm going to slow things down a little this week and work on some labs and finishing the ICND1 book, because I really need to start getting some sleep

Cisco NF was mostly general networking knowledge and packet structure's, the mapping between OSI and TCP layers, encapsulation, physical meidums, cableing, you know the stuff you always need a refresher in . Each chapter was a different layer, or focus on a type of transmission. It was really nice to get such a detailed analysis of the stack from top to bottom. At the end of the course in Chapter 11 they introduced the IOS and some basic cable interconnectivity, and initial configuration. The difference between user, privileged, global, simple stuff, nothing past layer 2 communications. In the Packet Tracer labs all of the devices had configurations and you just needed to do physical layer shooting, or ip/subnetting.

The DVD's covered the same info, but in far less detail because they're obviously an all in one series and just get you involved and knowledgeable with whats on the test. The dvd's of courses went through the very basic level configurations of Vlan's switchport security, memory mangment, static and rip routing, nat, pat, etc. Good stuff.

Last edited by scottsee on Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Steve wrote:Cool, thanks for the update Scott. Keep us up to date and post up if you run into anything you need help with.

I will, I have a lot of questions, I just need to get over the pride of asking really basic stuff. I spent 45 minuets 3 days ago tracing down a hardware problem that I should have just asked here. You guys are so ridiculously smart it's intimidating.

SDM really is terribad. I had to use it when I went through the Cisco Networking Academy (despite really, <i>really</i> not wanting to). Then I had to use it again when I took a CCNA:Sec bootcamp. Then <i>again</i> had to use it when I was self-studying for SNRS. I don't know if it's in the SECURE curriculum, but let me just say that trying to get SDM working for reals through GNS3 is a serious headache. Once you get a functional demo version get comfortable with it, and archive the setup files & etc in case you ever want to use it again without sullying one of your functional routers with it.Keep at it with the Networking Academy curriculum. In my opinion it was overkill for the CCNA certification exams, but anything you over-learn now you're sure to find a use for later on.